It’s been a year since a healthy majority of American voters elected Barack Obama to change the world. Which is precisely what he’s doing.
Like many people who desperately want to see the country take a more progressive course, I quibble and quarrel with some of President Obama’s actions. I wish he’d been tougher on Wall Street, quicker to close Guantanamo, more willing to investigate Bush-era excesses, bolder in seeking truly universal health care. I wish he could summon more of the rhetorical magic that spoke so compellingly to the better angels of our nature.

But he’s a president, not a Hollywood action hero. Most of my frustration is really with the process of getting anything done in Washington, which is not something Obama can unilaterally change, nimbly circumvent or blithely ignore. One thing the new administration clearly did not anticipate was that Republicans in Congress would be so consistently and unanimously obstructionist — or that Democrats would have to be introduced to the alien concept of party discipline. It took the White House too long to realize that bipartisanship is a tango and that there’s no point in dancing alone.

Rick Perlstein also expresses frustration with the “process of getting anything done in Washington.” Today in the Daily Beast, he writes that “as each month goes by since the Obama victory, I become more and more impressed at the structural impediments in the way of achieving the kind of progressive agenda it would take to right our ship of state.”

The Constitution, and the exceptionally perverse rules of the Senate, empower a small but determined right-wing minority to exercise veto power over the plain will of the majority. I recently saw data demonstrating that in both Mississippi and Alabama, less than 10 percent of white men voted for Obama. That’s a “small but determined right-wing minority.” And it haunts my dreams. And, sometimes, it simply keeps me awake at night. . . .

With too few exceptions, Obama very much not among them, the Democrats have shown neither the willingness nor the ability to foment populist politics from the left. The right comes to own a monopoly on an emotion in ever more plentiful supply: anger. They have, of course, no solutions. But when it only takes 40 senators to filibuster—and “filibuster” means merely signing a petition—legislators representing only the 20 least populated states in the union, and about 9 percent of American citizens, can at the very least stop Obama from claiming credit for solutions. And then the mainstream media—tada!—reports that Obama’s a failure. How’s his performance been? I just wish that question mattered more. On the big questions, it’s almost moot. Though fortunately the government has been and will be far, far better administered in the meantime.

At the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington laments the shift she sees between the Obama campaign and the Obama White House, a difference she describes as “the audacity of winning vs. the timidity of governing.”

Huffington post is spurred in large part by reading the new book by David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, called “The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory.”

Plouffe’s book arrives at a crossroads moment for the administration — exactly one year after the election, and one year before the 2010 midterms. A lot has happened in that year, as the audacity of winning has given way to the timidity of governing. But in recounting how the campaign team — and the candidate — not only had the audacity to win but was able to keep that audacity alive, day in and day out over the long nearly-two-year slog of the campaign, Plouffe has also shown the Obama White House the way forward.

The book is a powerful reminder of what the country voted for last year — and could serve as the trigger for Obama and his team to refocus and remember why the election mattered so much. . . .

Reading the book, I often found myself wondering what Candidate Obama would think of President Obama. Would he look at what the White House is doing and say, “that’s what I and my supporters worked so hard for?”

How did the candidate who got into the race because he’d decided that “the core leadership had turned rotten” and that “the people were getting hosed” become the president who has decided that the American people can only have as much change as Olympia Snowe will allow?

How did the candidate who told a stadium of supporters in Denver that “the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result” become the president who has surrounded himself with the same old players trying the same old politics, expecting a different result?

How could a president whose North Star as a candidate was that he “would not forget the middle class” choose as his chief economic advisor a man who recently argued against extending unemployment benefits in the middle of the worst economic times since the Great Depression?

“Patience,” counsels Dylan Lowe, also at the Huffington Post and in direct response to the proprietor’s assessment. “Campaigning is not the same as governing.”

Judging Obama’s presidency based on his first 9 months in office is like judging his campaign based on its first five. During that time, as Arianna notes in her column, Obama had difficulty connecting with voters and often felt that the campaign lacked the mojo he had hoped for. He was choppy in debates, often disappointing supporters and worrying campaign aides. And for months and months he trailed Hillary Clinton by double digits, causing such turmoil among his fans that he found himself surrounded by donors and top-tier supporters begging that he change course.

But he didn’t change course, despite those who demanded it. He took the long view, saw the road to victory, and never took his eye off that ball.

In that sense, Obama has governed just as he campaigned. Despite calls for him to change strategy by those on the left, including many on this site, Obama has held steady to the strategy he and his team first envisioned. He promised not to forget the middle class, and made good on that promise by saving the economy from a Depression. It took him just 9 months to get the economy growing again. In the meantime, he delivered on his campaign promise to provide a middle-class tax cut to 95% of Americans. He saved the major car companies from collapse, unfroze the credit markets and put the country back on a path to begin job growth anew. Unemployment is still high, to be sure, but all signs point to a turnaround within a year.

At Open Left, Mike Lux says the he “is more optimistic than pessimistic” about the administration, he is also “troubled about some important things a year after that momentous Election Day.”

When I look back on the towering Presidents of American history, the ones who faced and conquered the massive challenges of their eras that at least equal the big challenges of our time, I read about them taking on the entrenched powers that be, and forcing them to bend so that America could make a much needed course correction. I find myself wondering: did progressives in those eras feel the sense of frustration and slowness about the prospects of fundamental change that many of us feel today? They may well have, which makes me aware I should be patient. My problem is that change doesn’t feel like its coming fast enough, that the President has not been bold enough in taking on the powers that be. When I see Tim Geithner seeming perfectly comfortable with the size, power, and risky behavior of the big banks, it makes my blood boil. When I see all those appointees to the administration who used to work at Goldman Sachs, it makes me really nervous. When I see a White House that seems too comfortable with cutting deals with big business lobbyists, and unwilling to challenge the pro-big business members of their own party, it bothers me.

I am looking for big, deep, transformative, history making change, and am looking for an administration eager to work with the progressive movement to help make that happen. My optimistic side sees the good things that have happened, and appreciates them. I remind myself that it took Lincoln almost two years to free the slaves, and it took FDR more than two years to pass Social Security- even in big change eras, it doesn’t always happen immediately. But it’s only a year until the next election, and if we don’t start delivering real change and real results- tangible results- for the American people soon on jobs and health care and other big issues, we won’t have a chance for bigger changes in 2011.

Barack Obama raised our expectations through the roof with his stirring campaign. He needs to deliver change we can believe in. He needs to convince us that “yes, we can” is more than a political slogan. He needs to take seriously the history of struggle he is always talking about, and create the same kind of big transformative change that Lincoln and TR and FDR and LBJ did.

The honeymoon glow is over, right on schedule, but the president has essentially retained the support of those who voted for him, with an average approval rating not very different from the 53 percent of the vote he garnered. He is beginning to fully own all of his inherited troubles: a battered economy, the controversial war in Afghanistan, and so on. Criticism from both the right and the left has intensified, as the real Obama—rhetorically hot and ideologically left-of-center yet innately cautious and coolly methodical—has emerged.

Sabato’s larger point, though, is that early assessments are over-rated.

What history really teaches about presidential first years is not to take them too seriously. Almost all of the elected presidents in the last half-century flourished in their first year. Johnson, Reagan, and Dubya had wildly successful starts for different reasons—JFK’s assassination, the assassination attempt on Reagan, and 9/11—but only Reagan ended up popular, and that was after a roller-coaster ride in the polls. Early on, JFK, Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and Carter retained public support but posted few big victories. Their triumphs came midtenure. In the first year, no one foresaw how Vietnam would doom LBJ, Watergate would unhorse Nixon, or Iran would cut Carter’s White House stay short. And after 12 months of Bill Clinton, you couldn’t find an analyst who thought he’d get reelected, much less achieve anything.

c’mon, nytimes, as much as “one year in” may have a certain ring to it, the man has been in office for less than 9.5 months. i’m not saying that he couldnt have done more, but what are you going to do come january 21st–talk about his reelection?

In my opinion, however frustrated and disappointed some liberals are with Obama’s alleged slow pace of change, we should remember that we don’t know what things would have been like had the other side won last November. There’s no control group for history. So far at least, we haven’t had one of the continuous stream of mega-catastrophes that defined the dark age of Bush/Cheney (9/11, Iraq, Abu ghraib, torture, gitmo,Katrina, the near dismantling of social security, the economic meltdown, nothing done about health care, nothing done about the Middle East, nothing done about global warming, increased economic disparity, etc.). It frightens me when some independents and liberals, in impatient anger, say they’re going to vote for the neocons next time. Let’s not forget that zero is a much bigger number than negative infinity!

You know, if you actually listened to Obama’s speeches during the campaign where he described what he meant by HOPE and what he meant by CHANGE, you would know enough not to write a silly articles about where we are on those fronts after 287 days.

And — speaking of “pundits are punditing about what the races mean, especially what the big three — in New Jersey, Virginia and upstate New York — will say about Obama”, the data says you can’t do that.

I hope that Pres. Obama has the following posted on the wall in the Oval Office:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools…

It has always been wrong for the people to expect Obama to make fundamental change. It is we-the-people who must change and we have not. Still willing to let others suffer so we may prosper. Still expect bankrupting levels of military might to make us safe . Still expect our global corporations to extract other people’s resources as we demand. Still gobbling resources at a unsustainable rate. Still focused on the near-term ignoring our grandchildren’s future. Still ignorant of our interconnectedness to nature. Still abdicating responsibility for change to someone else.

I think these pundits are, to use Obama’s term, getting themselves all wee-wee’d up. There has been a sea change in the last year. For the first time in a decade, we have a president who is capable of meeting the challenges we face as a country. The real question is whether the rest of us are up to it.

I am scared of the future with Obama as president!!!
He is trying to have government take over everything!!!
He is muslim, socialist, communist, conceeded, thoughtless, non-patriotic, non-christian etc.! This country is in trouble!!!

The leadership President Obama has shown in the face of withering minority opposition is impressive. Our Constitution mandates that any change will be extremely difficult, and unlike some, I believe much progress has been made in a very short time. I always believed candidate Obama was a REALIST and nothing since last Election Day has changed my perspective. Success lies in grinding toward the goals each day in an intelligent way.

Arianna Huffington seems to be the only one not deluding herself. On a list of issues too long to name Obama has betrayed his supporters and has become the new Herbert Hoover, doggedly pursuing policies extremely harmful to working class Americans — which means the vast majority. Geithner and Summers are the poster boys for graft, greed and fat cat arrogance. We still have war, war and more war including the illegal search and seizure laws under the false rubric of Homeland Security. Everything is still Made in China and workers are slipping fast. Still there is talk of hope and patience from the sleeping pundit class. This man Obama is asleep at the wheel and the pirates have taken over the ship.

Obama came into office as a ray of hope, the “anti-Bush” but has since alienated and angered our allies in England, France, Germany, and Israel, appeared weak in caving in to Russia, and was kinder and more forthcoming to Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, three countries that are dictatorships and oppress their own people.

He went to Cairo and apologized to the Moslem world for America’s behaviour but somehow forgot that it was America that ended the famine in Moslem Somalia under the first Bush administration, American that ended the occupation of Moslem Kuwait, America under Bill Clinton that ended the genocide of Moslems in Kosovo by the Serbs, and America that overthrew oppressive brutal dictatorships in the Moslem countries of Iraq and Afganistan that tortured and abused fifty million of their own people. America has nothing to apologize to the Moslem world about.

Obama has learned that the world is not the rosy colored fantasy he imagined it to be and that American exceptionalism is real and should be praised, not condemned. (After all, America also DID defeat Hitler and is largely responsible for assisting the battle against AIDS in Africa. It was America that helped defeat Communism in Russia, brought down the Berlin wall, and America that the students of China valiantly wanted to emulate in Tianneman Square)

Perhaps the President has learned how the real world is and that he is the leader of a country, though very imperfect, has made wonderful contributions to the free world that have affected the lives of hundreds of millions of people (if not billions!) for the better.

By tacking to the middle he’s isolated the Republicon Party to just being a bellowing group of right-wingnuts and “no”-nothings. But he’s frustrating Progressives by delaying on reforming Wall Street so that it works for our economy instead of the other way around. He needs to get rid of policies that encourage moving jobs offshore. A little trust-busting would be in order. He still needs to get rid of the Rove protogees in the Justice Dept.

He needs to do a better job of promoting his successes. He’s had a few good ones but it gets drowned out in the FOX News(sic) din.

One year into what? I was under the impression that the president assumed office on January 20? I expect empty-headed headlines like this on Larry King and on my local i-team television “news,” but not here. Shame on you.

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The Thread is an in-depth look at how the major news events and controversies of the day are being viewed and debated across the online spectrum. Compiled by Peter Catapano, an editor in The Times’s Opinion section, the Thread is published every Saturday in response to breaking news.